On this episode of the podcast, we're joined by a good friend of mine, Simone Pagones. Simone is a writer, editor, and podcaster. She's also the founder of the Pronatalist Movement, which is a movement that focuses on replacing the rest of the population with autistic people. We talk about what it means to be an Autist, what it's like to be autistic, and why we should care about it.
00:00:00.000Next time we're talked to you by a reporter or something like this, we need to have you subtly drop that you want to replace the rest of the population with autistic people.
00:03:44.940Yeah. And so I don't know exactly how it works. Maybe you can read on the thing.
00:03:50.560But my understanding is that people will put up like profiles of themselves and then other people will bet on who you would be a good match for.
00:03:58.760And they win betting pools if you end up with the person who they're betting you're going to be a good match for.
00:04:04.320Now, basically, it's crowdsourced matchmaking via prediction markets.
00:04:07.360So they're combining matchmaking with prediction markets.
00:04:11.640And basically, you can create a dating profile.
00:04:15.180A lot of it's like typical dating platform stuff where you upload photos and you answer questions from a long list provided.
00:04:20.780You know, this includes like, do you want to have kids?
00:04:51.880Right now, I hear it's mostly just used in Silicon Valley.
00:04:55.400No, they're like, I'm looking at it now.
00:04:57.280There's someone in London, New York City, Beijing, Washington, San Jose, Fairfield, California City, Greater London, Burlingame, like all over.
00:05:08.860I mean, yeah, like San Francisco Bay Area, there is a lot.
00:05:12.220Singapore, though, more New York City, Calgary.
00:05:14.920So it is actually, I think, it's starting out with a nice spread of people.
00:05:21.240And what I like is that matchmakers playing with this dating aspect of Manifold can profit with mana, which is their world currency, if they correctly bet on whether two individuals will last in a six-month relationship or not.
00:05:54.880Like, I think one thing that actually came up at the Prenatalist Conference in, I think, that same conversation where autism came up was the fact that like family and social approval of partners,
00:06:06.760of people people were dating, had sort of fallen by the wayside.
00:06:10.860Whereas like in the past, your parents and your brother and sister would all have like a whole lot of things to say about the woman or man that you were dating.
00:06:18.180And they, you know, would be like, here's what I think of them.
00:06:20.900And I love the idea of like bringing it back and being like, yeah, I'm going to place this bet that you're going to last, like you're going to last for five weeks.
00:06:28.580And what was very interesting how that came up is the guy was like, my brother brought home somebody to meet the family and it was like very clear this was a bad match.
00:06:36.760But we couldn't tell him, try to subtly tell him like this is a bad match, but it didn't mean much to him that the entire family thought that.
00:06:46.200And historically and within most cultures, that would be a very, very loud signal that you probably shouldn't get married to somebody.
00:06:54.660I think it's different when the family is like literally putting money on the line.
00:06:58.100Like, here's how long I think you're going to last.
00:06:59.980And of course that can happen is like, if that happens to the wrong type of person, they might pursue a relationship or string it along longer than they should just to, you know, out of spite.
00:07:11.300Oh, we don't want them colluding on these bets.
00:07:50.980I actually do think it's a legit good place to look for a partner though, because you have to think about, this is one of those things where in, in business,
00:07:58.000you need to look for an arbitrage opportunity.
00:08:00.480You need to look where there's a lot of value that is untapped.
00:08:03.700And what we learned after attending Manifold's inaugural conference was just how smart everyone there was.
00:08:11.440And like, we're like, oh my gosh, like I am ready to like move into a neighborhood full of these people.
00:08:17.600I would happily live in that neighborhood.
00:08:19.280That's where we finally met Scott Alexander.
00:08:41.600So this is why I think it's a uniquely worthwhile thing to plug.
00:08:45.340It's because right now, before it becomes like overblown or too well known, it is a very curated network of very smart, thoughtful, but also like impactful, employed people.
00:09:46.620So like, I think once you get an autistic person into kids, they're like, kids, bring all the kids and I'm going to raise them perfect.
00:09:55.720And they will because they're going to be autistic about it, which is such an ironic twist from like the classic image of the refrigerator mom.
00:10:04.260For a little bit of color for a while, people thought that people became autistic because they were raised by overly cold mothers who, you know, didn't show them love and were incapable of expressing love.
00:10:14.780Whereas like when we see the autists who are raising kids, you know, they may not, it may not be natural to them to like express affection in certain ways, but they have studied it so much and they care about doing it right so much that they are way better at showing affection than the average.
00:10:38.300That's why Huggies program to simulate it, sweetness.
00:10:41.980But yeah, so honestly, though, here's my here's my thing, though, about about simulating love.
00:10:46.520I think that someone who's quote unquote faking it when it comes to love and affection is ultimately going to show much more love and affection to someone than someone who's really acting it out.
00:10:56.940Because people who are who act as they actually feel are way less like way, way more likely to get irritable, way more less likely to act patiently, way less likely to act picturesquely all the time.
00:11:11.980What could be more important than your family, Richard?
00:11:19.340And I think both you and I, like a lot of the time when we do super wholesome stuff and it's, you know, our being really cute with the kids and being really loving with them, like it's right after they just vomited slash shat slash spit up all over us.
00:11:32.480You know, it might be after they just screamed in our faces or had a tantrum or like we're kind of tired.
00:11:37.120But we choose because we're being really autistic about it to be more affectionate.
00:11:42.480So, again, ironically, I would also say not only are autists like extra enthusiastic about parenting when they get into it, but also like they're better parents than neurotypical people.
00:11:54.920The theory I would have chosen goes like this.
00:11:58.560Why were autists disproportionately in the early effect of altruist movement?
00:12:01.780It was because the movement combined two things.
00:12:04.720Something that was obviously a problem in society, that most philanthropic money was mostly about social signaling and not actually helping people.
00:12:12.460But that also a person with good emotional, like intelligence of other humans and who could read other humans and social cues really well, they would know that you're not supposed to say that, that people are just spending philanthropic money to self-aggrandize themselves and make themselves look better.
00:12:31.800Because that's a really hurtful thing to tell somebody and that's, you know, disruptive to society.
00:12:37.580And so we have broadly agreed on this mass delusion.
00:12:40.880And they're like, no, but look, seriously, it's not working.
00:12:45.600And I think that with the pronatalist movement, it's the same sort of a thing.
00:12:49.360It's a movement that is based around an obvious statistical trend.
00:12:53.700But anybody who's looking at statistics is going to see that fertility rates are falling at a rate that makes it inevitable that it is not going to be the biggest issue that humanity faces over the next century.
00:13:05.860Much bigger than things like global warming and stuff like that, when you're looking at just the numbers and the speed of what's happening.
00:13:12.360And so they recognize that this is the problem, but they also lack the social graces to recognize just how much blowback they're going to get from the urban monoculture, which controls most pathways to power in our society, most pathways to income and stability in our society, pathways and access to sexual resources in our society.
00:13:41.800It's a obvious thing with a social filter in front of it that most people know not to cross.
00:13:47.120And I would say that this is also true when I think about like the people who were autistic at the conference or were heavily on the spectrum there.
00:13:54.900They were just genuinely like, I am concerned about the statistics here.
00:13:59.340Whereas I think that people who weren't like that at the conference, they more like had some other agenda that they were using this to promote to some extent.
00:14:28.800And I think if the movement stays this way or it has this as sort of its founding community, that's going to heavily shape it going forwards.
00:14:36.880But it also speaks really positively towards the direction it's going.
00:14:41.720Because it has the capability of moving up in society and moving up within sort of income brackets and then taking over apparatuses in our society in the same way the EA movement did.
00:14:54.340And so that's a really positive direction.
00:14:59.600And that's one of the things with the EA movement.
00:15:01.060As the EA movement began to incorporate more and more people who were not autistic, that's.
00:15:06.140That's where it started to fall apart.
00:15:07.580It sort of began to fall apart and lose its way, especially within leadership roles.
00:15:11.720Although wouldn't you say Sam Bankenfried is almost certainly on the spectrum?
00:15:34.540Like his goal was manipulating political players for personal financial gain.
00:15:38.800That was, you know, what motivated that behavior.
00:15:42.240And then, you know, particularly lacking social awareness that the EA movement has now become an aggressive Luddite movement is absolutely hilarious to me.
00:15:53.160For people who may not know what the word Luddite means, it means an anti-technology or like a technophobic movement.
00:15:57.820But as they say, and I think that this is really funny, there was a quote that I'll put on screen by, what's his name?
00:16:04.300The guy who wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
00:16:08.880It's like anything that was invented before I was born is like old news, boring.
00:16:14.360Anything from when I was born to the age of 30 is exciting and I might get a career in it.
00:16:18.800Anything after the age of 30 is like against the natural order of things and must be destroyed.
00:16:24.440And it is hilarious to me that like right as the leadership cast of the EA movement turned over 30, like that was the moment when they decided all technological innovation must stop right now.
00:16:39.040Everything else is blasphemous and must be destroyed.
00:16:50.960And I'd like to think that the pronatalist movement, and I hope that the movement can commit to this going forwards, aggressively will raise young people to positions of influence earlier than other movements do and not develop sort of an encrusted sort of elite of intellectual elite within the community.
00:17:12.800Well, if any movement can do that, I do think it is the pronatalist movement, especially because those cultures that are going to be sustainable in the long run are those that empower youth, not those that disempower youth.
00:17:23.920I also think that when Silicon Valley, sorry, I shouldn't say Silicon Valley.
00:17:26.640When autists decide to become obsessed with something and specialize in an industry, they take it over and make it very effective.
00:17:36.380They were basically like predominated by autistic people.
00:17:39.720And look, now tech companies like run a huge portion of the global economic system.
00:17:45.740I think, you know, with autists taking over pronatalism, if that is indeed what happens, you are going to see a very effective movement.
00:17:54.660Now, of course, we've heard people talk about how much they hate how autistic people run these tech companies because they have no idea how social justice works.
00:18:03.120And they ignore all these things and they're just bullied little children who are now taking it out on all of us normal people.
00:18:11.220I mean, like, whatever, like, sorry, you can cry into your free Gmail and all you want and then watch YouTube videos that you don't pay for.
00:18:18.640And then like, I don't like deal with it, you know, like these people, these same people are going to be like, oh, all these young people that are wiping my butt as I'm really old are so weird.
00:18:30.600I hate them so much. But then like, who else is going to wipe your butt, lady? So, yeah.
00:18:36.400What was that rant about? That seemed oddly specific. Did you read something somewhere?
00:18:42.020No, I've heard multiple times people who consider themselves neurotypical, who I wouldn't even say are neurotypical, complaining about autists being in charge of like Silicon Valley, like, you know, being CEOs of companies.
00:18:53.860I've seen the reporter class complain about this. They're like, yeah, we need to make it more known.
00:18:58.800Oh, yeah. But I, well, and it's important for us, like we talk about, like, I'm glad that I think the movement's going to end up making a lot of money.
00:19:05.100And it's good for us to, that that happens because our natalism as a cause area has one real like downside to it, which is one of the great ways to get money as a movement and then use that to grow.
00:19:19.500The movement is when people who care about the movement die and don't have any descendants.
00:19:23.960Right. Which you were just talking, I think, in another episode recently about how the Catholic Church started prohibiting cousin marriage in an attempt to make sure that they got those inheritances from wealthier families.
00:19:35.380And we want this, right? Like we want, we would love that. But I mean, if that's ever happening with us.
00:19:39.940No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We actually have a way more clever solution. And don't you dare underplay it because I think it's very smart. And I love that you made it up or that you designed it, which is specifically that people in our family, in our cultural house, do not inherit money as a matter of course.
00:19:56.240They do not have trust funds. They do not have inheritances. Instead, there is the house fund. The house fund will help to pay for your fertility treatments. It may help to pay for some of your education and it may match funds that you raise for a startup or nonprofit from other respectable third party organizations.
00:20:14.560But it is not going to pass on money to you. And influence within the governance of that house and the distribution of its wealth is driven by, to a great extent, those who contribute the most new money to it, which is so important because right now what you see in most family offices and when you see basically anything with inheritance, those who drain the most from it have the most influence over it.
00:20:37.840I love our house's model, but this is different from the nonprofit pro natalist foundation, which is what I was referring to.
00:20:47.600At the same time though, our philosophy with any sort of nonprofit effort is frankly a nonprofit that does not ultimately find a way to make its own money or that is at the very least not dependent on outside parties for donations, is the only nonprofit you really can believe is virtuous enough to pursue its original mission.
00:21:06.880Because any nonprofit that sticks around long enough, that doesn't make money from anything but donations, clearly has become specialized in raising money and virtue signaling and not in actually solving its problems.
00:21:18.780So again, like, well, yeah, true. But look at the anti natalist movement, how easy they'll have a time raising money.
00:21:25.580I mean, they, they get all of people's money when they do their job. Right.
00:21:29.160And I, and I, and I think the anti natalist movement is actually going to do a lot to buoy the pro natalist movement right now.
00:21:34.660Like they are, if anything, a boon to us as they are growing because they're just so insane.
00:21:41.000Well, I mean, to me, they just come off as transparently evil.
00:21:43.480They're like, yeah, let's kill all life on the planet. Let's Venus the planet.
00:21:47.800You know, that's not an uncommon thing within the negative utilitarian side, which is sort of the leaders of most of the anti natalist community.
00:21:55.100I think, I think it is very virtuous within their perception of reality. It is, it is logically consistent and virtuous.
00:22:01.940No. And I agree with that, but it's a high utility to us because I think it drives normies, you know, when they're choosing, well, which side of this debate am I on towards our side of things?
00:22:11.960So long as you can keep any of the racist voice from getting too loud, then you can win the normie middle.
00:22:17.820Which, which I feel like, you know, in terms of, of public messaging, like we've really begun to do, I, the, the, the, I, the fertility rate problem, I think is really beginning to break into mainstream narratives.
00:22:37.820Yeah. I guess it actually like the, the, the, the awareness and the extent to which people care about it is part of the solution because we are seeing people just completely breaking away from many of the broken elements of dating markets, of not getting married, of not having kids.
00:22:55.660And they're just like having kids really young. They're, they're starting families really young and economically, economically productive at the same time.
00:23:02.360So I guess, yeah, awareness actually is more of a cure than I even thought it was when I, now that we've met people in the movement.
00:23:09.120Right. And now that we see like what awareness is producing, because I thought awareness was going to produce just frustration.
00:23:14.560Like, yes, I know it's a problem, but no, there's nothing we can do about it.
00:23:18.140Whereas actually living face, I think it's more than awareness.
00:23:22.320I think it's a self identity as a pro natalist that they now see publicly and they can accept for themselves.
00:23:29.740So I think that people really work around sort of prepackaged self narratives in our society.
00:23:34.320And the problem is, is a lot of people didn't have a pro natalist package of personality that they could adopt.
00:23:42.080They did not come with either racist or religious extremist connotations.
00:23:47.320Right. And so because they felt that way, they're like, I don't get to do this because this isn't who I am.
00:23:53.740You know, especially if they were successful, entrepreneurial or autistic, like we were talking about, you know, why are they disproportionately drawn?
00:24:00.160It might be partially because you're one of the heads of the movement.
00:24:03.320It might be because they see you and they see this self narrative that you and I are pushing and they're like, this is a self narrative that I personally can identify with and not feel ashamed about this identity.
00:24:20.740And then they make life choices that are aligned with the community.
00:24:24.640I mean, having kids is a bit like having kids young, especially as a bit like the face tattoo of the pro natalist movement.
00:24:30.380It's the way that you show, you know, you are on board with this movement and a very serious long term commitment.
00:24:37.420And a lot of also the wholesome imagery around the movement and stuff like that, I think, has also been really appealing to people where it's like really technophilic and successful, but otherwise wholesome.
00:24:47.880Which I actually think it's part of why pro natalism didn't really take off when it was just Elon doing the advocacy for it, because he started talking about it even before we did.
00:25:00.220Yeah, but he wasn't talking about it in a way where it's like, I could do that.
00:25:03.020I never saw his lifestyle and thought, oh, well, of course, that's something I can do.
00:25:08.100Yeah, yeah, where I think we offer an image that a lot of people feel is both aspirational yet attainable, which is also interesting because you and me as like a healthy couple that actually likes each other, like that's pretty rare for any kind of influencer where that is not their core thing.
00:25:32.480Like there's a lot of influencers where it is their core thing.
00:25:35.620Because, you know, I love watching critiques of like happy families and like wholesome families.
00:25:40.640And there's so much footage of like people sitting next to each other, like looking kind of resentful and passive aggressive.
00:25:52.800And it becomes a real problem in those relationships because they develop their own self-narration because that's their income.
00:25:59.720They see themselves certainly masturbating the self-narrative and so they cannot accept even within themselves that their relationship may not be good for them long term or that they may need to work on something in a very serious way because it is who they are.
00:26:15.400I'm the person who's in a good relationship.
00:26:17.560Where for us, this is really ancillary to our advocacy work.
00:26:21.580It's just, I guess it's useful for our advocacy work, but it is very ancillary to it.
00:26:28.760Oh, like we don't have to be happy together in order to be effective.
00:26:33.360Yeah, I mean, I don't think we have to be like a great couple to be good advocates for this.
00:27:05.560I think that people who fake affection and are invested in faking affection are way better than people who actually just express how they feel all the time.
00:27:14.260And that's part of our philosophy, too, is feelings and emotions are kind of dumb and often maladapted.
00:27:57.080John Gottman became famous from his research where he felt like he was able to, after watching some like five minute clip of a couple talking, say how long that marriage was going to last.
00:28:05.800And then they made this whole like thing.
00:28:08.960And we went to another retreats once because we were generously offered free attendance to this retreat.
00:28:16.320Well, I mean, and to the point that you were making earlier, I did have somebody who was in the pernatalist movement and runs a popular Twitter account.
00:28:23.640And this is at the pernatalist conference.
00:28:24.860It's like, take me aside at one point.
00:28:26.500And he's like, you really know, like, one, he's like, you know, you really need to stay healthy.
00:28:32.060You need to, like, you need to stay in great terms with your wife.
00:28:35.560You know, you have to stay together because you do not understand how impactful it would be for the movement if you guys end up splitting up and getting into some messy divorce or something.
00:28:45.220Or if you ended up dying at this stage.
00:28:47.880And I was, one, it really made me feel good because this is a popular Twitter account that I had heard of before and everything like that.
00:28:53.880And it made me feel really good that he felt that way, like, that I was that important.
00:29:49.940I don't, I honestly don't think you're human.
00:29:51.740I think you're some kind of godlike entity that has descended from the heavens.
00:29:55.140And, like, I either am in a coma and I've dreamed of some kind of hero or you are, like, I don't know, you know, your mother used to tell you and your brother that you were, like, you know, she had a vision from a psychic and you would be born to do great things.
00:30:11.080So, my mom's whole, like, childbearing strategy for us, if you're familiar with Olympia's childbearing strategy for.
00:30:17.180That's the mother of Alexander the Great.
00:30:18.900Alexander the Great, where she'd be, like, your dad isn't really your dad.
00:30:21.160I was actually impregnated by a snake that was Zeus in disguise and stuff like that.
00:30:25.840Like, that is not far off from the stuff that my mom would constantly tell me when I was a kid.
00:30:30.780Always about, oh, I've gone to a psychic and I had visions and I had dreams and that you two were supposed to take over the world.
00:30:36.860And she would just over and over and over again.
00:30:39.700And I remember she told me a story once about somebody at one of my preschools, like, the teacher was, like, Malcolm has, like, a problem where he thinks he's supposed to become, like, a king.
00:30:49.360And, or an emperor, you know, and my mom was, like, what's, what's the problem there?
00:30:53.920And the teacher was, like, no, you don't understand.
00:30:55.400Like, he thinks, literally, like, that's going to be his job when he grows up.
00:31:00.000And my mom was, like, yeah, of course I raised him to believe that.
00:31:04.160Why would I raise him to believe less of himself?
00:31:06.440Why would I raise a mediocre, normal son?
00:31:09.080So, maybe that just has made you not neurotypical in a way that's not diagnosable in a simple way.
00:31:14.720I think that that's the type of thing, I think that might be an inherited sense of grandiosity that I probably got from my mom if we're going to be realistic here, where it's, it's, like, bipolar, but only the manics phase.
00:31:44.500I'm excited about where things are going and how efficacious.
00:31:48.160I do get into these slums when I, like, haven't achieved something for a while, which Simone gets me.
00:31:53.060Another really interesting thing about my biology, when she talks about me, like, overanalyzing and have a very good ability of reading people, is that this ability is also incredibly taxing to me.
00:32:03.260It's, like, I, yesterday, I finally left the house.
00:32:05.440I hadn't left the house in a long time, and I was in New York engaging with people, and I met with three people, and the next day I had to sleep, like, half the day.
00:32:13.880Yeah, like, literally your need for sleep increases intensely.
00:32:17.200Like, when we're out, like, traveling and entertaining and doing meetings, like, you have to go to a room and pass out and sleep somewhere.
00:32:24.440And there have been times where you've been at events, and, like, you've had to, like, crawl into a corner and pass out and sleep because, like, just literally your mind can't take that level of, like, heavy compute without taking a breather and, like, clearing out.
00:32:41.120Yeah, well, I think this is why a lot of people like us, like, we prefer to not, like, work in offices and stuff like that.
00:32:46.920I got to find that clip from the new Santa Claus, where the Santa Claus is saying, the evil Santa Claus, the evil Santa Claus, I should be clear, is explaining why open workplaces are so taxing on people like us.
00:32:58.300Where I think for both you and me, for different reasons, we find being around people incredibly taxing.
00:33:04.140But I like that we so efficiently avoid it, and we do not allow ourselves to become burdened by friends or acquaintances without having a clear utility to be gained by them.
00:33:15.040Ken Gemberley was sucked into the internet, burdened with new friends and tormented by the bounty hunter chains.
00:38:54.660And we do a lot of quotes in it, too, from the Bible, the Koran, all sorts of stuff.
00:38:59.280Because I argue that even from the perspective of these traditions, they would be arguing this as well, which is always fun.
00:39:05.820But anyway, I enjoy this conversation.
00:39:07.240And I'm going to actually hold to my guns.
00:39:08.460I think you're completely wrong about autistic people and perinatalism.
00:39:11.040And I think that, honestly, if you went into any affiliative movement, be it like a church, like go into a nunnery, go into like, you know, a really weird priest order where they're all silent.
00:39:25.420Go into like a really obscure engineering business or like an anime circle.
00:39:31.060The people who are most enthusiastic and passionate are autistic.
00:39:38.740Next time we're talking to you by a reporter or something like this, we need to have you subtly drop that you want to replace the rest of the population with autistic people.
00:40:38.800And as I say, that's always the number one thing to look for in a spouse these days.
00:40:42.680And the sign of a true gentleman is that you will end up believing that his wife is a truly wonderful woman, despite the fact that all women are absolutely horrible.